Toshiba's newest 3D laptop will use glasses

Erica, 21st January 2011

Despite all of the "glasses-free" 3D products that have been in the news this month, many companies still see active shutter stereoscopic 3D glasses as the only way to get the absolute sharpest 3D picture quality. Enter the Toshiba T551/D8B.
The laptop is the first from Toshiba that actually uses glasses to create a 3D image. While it's unclear if these are Nvidia's glasses that work universally with 3D graphics chips, or something proprietary from Toshiba, it is a different step than many other companies are taking at this point.

After disappointing 3D TV sales last year, hardware manufacturers are turning to either cheaper or more unconventional 3D methods. Glasses-free 3D was one of the trends at CES, and although it can produce images with the sense of depth on a flat screen, it comes with a lot of shortcomings.

Toshiba's newly announced laptop also has a Blu-ray drive that is compatible with Blu-ray 3D movies. Its 15.6-inch screen has a 1366x768 resolution and there's a 1 GB Nvidia GeForce GT 540M chip inside.

With 8 GB of memory and a 750 GB hard drive, this is one powerful laptop.

No word yet on the release date for this one, but it will be coming out in Japan next month. Over there, it'll sell for around $2,500.